


Of Tales and Tapestry

by UbiquitousSpontaneities



Series: Side Quests and Small Talk [9]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: :D, Folktales, Gen, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Linked Universe Zine, good 'ol in universe legends, i mean theres 9 of these funky dudes, in some way or another, no way they havent entered common mythos, so i'm here to have fun with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28214274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UbiquitousSpontaneities/pseuds/UbiquitousSpontaneities
Summary: There are as many stories of Heroes as there are people to tell them.This is one of them.
Series: Side Quests and Small Talk [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1493024
Comments: 10
Kudos: 45





	Of Tales and Tapestry

**Author's Note:**

> hiya gang sorry for disappearing for months... school's kicking my ass but crossing my fingers ill finish up some of my longterm wips soon, 
> 
> wrote this for the LU zine back in June so i had a lot of fun with it, ive got at least 3k of notes about this story and honestly could write at least eight more fics about them but zines' gotta have a word limit so here's what we got, maybe some of those ideas'll see the light of day some other time (i have so many fake folktales i brainstormed guys its unreal i could ramble about them for days i love it so much) 
> 
> ly all very much and ty for reading <3 hope you enjoy!!

He doesn’t remember much of his mother. Doesn’t remember much of that life at all, to be honest. It’s nothing drastic that caused it, just the quiet tragedy of time passing and people moving on. The natural haze of childhood memories, breaking them down to a touch here, a glimpse there. 

He remembers a hand, calloused and rough with the work of the fields, deft and delicate with the work of the spindle. He remembers flickers of a forest, a town, young grains sown in short, neat rows. Sometime between then and now it all fades away. He thinks of them, in the late hours of night. When the hours bled together and he’s too lost in thought, too tired to be much more than tense, anxious instinct and the anticipation balled up in his throat. 

The soft voice whispering his name is much more vivid. 

The stories it tells even more so. 

There are as many stories as there were people to tell them. 

Stories of daring, of caution, of regret. Big and small, sagas of foundation, growth, rebirth. More often, they’re tragedies, warnings passed on from one caring voice to the next. To his mother, to travelers, to wanderers and hermits, and then to him. They are told quietly, grown like weeds in what remains of the temples, the castles, the towns. They are the peasant’s tales, what passes for history when all the people know of the princess is her name.

They are stories of Heroes, and when he lies awake at night, lost somewhere between ages long past and an impossible future, that voice whispers them to him, and he wonders. 

There are as many stories of Heroes as there were stars in the sky. Flickering valiantly against the quenching blankness of the night. 

He wonders how many of them were true. 

– 

_‘One day, the Hero went to the Market.’_

_And Link laughed, tiny hands caught in coarse, caring ones._

They never really decide on the nicknames, it’s really just something that happens. They introduce themselves - they settle on their formal titles, for simplicity’s sake - but it’s the smaller ones, the way they call him Traveler, that make him smile. Because it reminds him of the travelers of the stories. The Artisan and the Founder and the Adventurer, the Savior and the Heavens Bringer and the Protector. The Smithy says something one night and it sets Link, it sets _Hyrule_ thinking.

And that’s what really starts it. 

He sees it - flickers of them. Their legacies. The names are lost and the details are worn thin with the winds of time but there’s little bits here and there. Sky’s kindness, Legend’s perseverance. 

_‘One day, the Hero came across an old woman. “Grandmother,” the Hero said, “How are you today?”’ She said softly, as she dropped the spindle between her fingers. The two watched the thread twirl together in the air as she continued, a delicate dance of this end over that, this fiber between those, all of it moments away from a snap - and everything unravels. ‘And the old woman said-’_

It’s not just them even. Those two, they would make sense. They might not know much about their tangled timestreams but he does know of them in his past - the story of foundation, of salvation, is fundamental, even if the finer details have been brushed away. And no words are needed for the Hero of Legend. 

_“They say the Founder was a great and-” the older man paused, hands knuckle deep in thin, watery dough. “Powerful man, and that his sword blazed with the fires of the heavens.”_

The protective glint in Four’s eyes, the care with which he handles their weapons every night. The quiet, knowing look that let him eventually come to terms with letting him handle the blade that had left his side less times than he could count on a single hand. 

_‘He was a mysterious man,’ she whispered, leaning close and hugging him tightly below the windowsill. He squirmed a little - and she pulled him back out of sight, those tough, coarse hands guiding his through the weave. Her heart raced against his back. ‘They say very little was seen of him - shh, dear heart - though many knew of the marvelous shields and swords he made. The sky grew orange and red when his forge was lit, and the air wept ashes and soot.’_

A flicker of this moment or that and he sees it, a faint reminder of a time, of people who now only exist in those fleeting memories.

The others too - there’s a few that remind him of the old man at times, some of the captain. It's strange, and there’s little logic to it, but he appreciates it. Sometimes he wonders if they know, or care - the sailor’s tales of a race from the skies seem much more vivid, and the bond between the farmhand and the pioneer undeniably grew stronger after their realization. But he keeps quiet, and he’s grateful they don’t question it. Or at least don’t comment on it, if Legend’s knowing and quizzical glances are anything to go off of. But they don’t question his small smiles and hesitations, and they carry on.

_‘Well, there is one I know pretty well,’ the old man grinned, a sharp, shaky smile, filled with a few too many teeth but more than enough appreciation for someone to share the fire with. “Ever heard the tale of the Hero and the Rabbit?”_

The privacy is nice, when all their other secrets seem to have been laid bare. 

_‘And the legends say no one saw him again.’ The man’s voice was soft, barely older than his own, as he whispered into the creeping night._

But some of them are stranger. Some of the tales speak of no heroes he knows of. Some of them speak of terrible, tragic ends. A misstep here or there, a series of faults leading to a terrible, unknowable death. Part of him knows the effects of time but another worries just as much. 

_‘They say he lost himself in the trees, the brooks, the stones, and no one living saw him again.’ The wind grew cold that night, and they huddled closer towards the flames._

He worries they are of the ones he knows, but he honestly doesn’t know which would be worse.

_‘The hero failed.” The cave was quiet and solemn, a grave to a thousand heroes before him. ‘But you-’_

It always looped back to that. To him. 

It takes a while for him to realize. And he doesn’t like it, it’s one of those late nights where he’s on watch for what seems like ages with no ending in sight and all he can think about are those contradictions. He stares up at a sky so terribly familiar and so foreign at the same time - a sickening paradox that sits awkwardly in his mind alongside that fundamental feeling of displacement that jolts him into nausea every time they’re tossed through those goddess-forsaken portals. He stares and thinks and thinks and somehow accepts the fact he’s in for a night of restlessness. 

_‘The hero failed. But-’_

And he thinks.

_‘He was lost to the world - unable to sit still and lost to the ambitious void of the world. And the world forgot him.’_

And he thinks.

_She shifts in her seat, turns away from the string to end the tale. She brushes the straggling hair from his face and breathes quietly to say, ‘And the hero was lost. For he became too ambitious-’_

_‘- too worldly-’_

_‘- too trusting-’_

_‘-too cold-’_

_‘-too harsh-’_

_‘-too-’_

_And the thread snapped._

  
  


– 

  
  


The magic sparked and fizzed behind him, and he steeled himself for the discomfort, but it did not come. The ball lodged in his chest loosened and dispersed, and he breathed easy for the first time in months.

The air stung with grit and terror -and beneath that, determination. He scuffed his boot in the sunbaked and barren sand. It was a wasteland, a world freshly built upon the remains of a tragedy. And it was undeniably home. 

Voices hitched behind him, and a worried mutter gave way for a yelp from a ragged copse of trees nearby - all their warning before a clumsy force of something big and rude and certainly not belonging crashed through, chasing someone across their path.

She stumbled over her feet, gesturing wildly to the group. The monsters spilled forward, a haphazard mockery of the fearsome formations he had grown used to, and he gave her a small smile. 

_‘One day, the Hero came across-’_

“Link! It’s good to see you again!” she cried, voice shrill as she ducked beneath a swipe - which he quickly returned in kind, leaving a gaping gash across the beast’s side.

_‘-too trusting-’_

“Good to be back, grandmother!” Hyrule grinned, and left her in the care of a waiting Sky. 

With quick, practiced motions, flitting from hero to hero as naturally as a fly and darting beneath sweeping sword strokes and careful maneuvers, he joined the fray, each step in perfect time with one of his brethren.

There are as many stories of Heroes are there are people to tell them. 

Big and small stories, grand tales of foundation and growth, tragedies of destruction. They thrive in the remains of a world long gone, and in the mourning of a people that time will forget.

Much more than a mother’s face or a father’s laugh, he remembers the tales, the fables, the stories of times long gone and ages of splendor. The warnings hidden behind a turn of a phrase or a moral buried beneath the tumult of the battle. 

He knows the stories well. And the stories know him. 

There are as many stories of Heroes as there are people to tell them. 

Twisted and turned over the centuries, warped and wizened like the manuscripts that once held them and the murals long washed away. 

Not all of them are true.

But his will be.

The world will know the Hero of Hyrule. 

And they won’t need to know another.


End file.
